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My phone vibrated and my heart crawled up intohand After pressing speaker, I answered "Hello?"

"Penny Bristol, I presuh its owner had sucked on the end of a great ?"

"This is Baron Kempworth, and I am here to collect you"

"Overher, you stupidly dressed piece of trash Now corabbed the phone out of my hand, closed it, and threw it behind us "Don’t answer that anyive you an ultimatum Come on Time’s up It’s time to save Veronica’s faun, and aimed

The blast h on the list," E across his face "Coh the house and to the door leading to the garage He slapped the button to open the left garage door, still intact, and it rattled upward The door next to it was lying on the hood of my badly dented car

Outside, in the driveway, sat my mom’s car, unblemished Behind it, spread across the lawn and into the street,for cover froes

Chapter Forty

"Turn it into rage, Penny," Ee, still within the ward’s protection "Turn the pain into anger, and let it fly"

Loud crying preceded limpse of Veronica Her face bloody and one eye swollen, she was being dragged down the street by a man in a blood-red robe

"Kempworth," E and threw The spell burst out and sliced through the air, a e closest me, and then the two next to her suffered the same fate They all looked down in surprise as their top halves slid off their bottoe in the blood-red robe stopped suddenly He stepped behind Veronica and started to back-pedal, dragging her with hiically He had Veronica He planned to hurt her E the safety of the ward and venturing into the fray

A shotgun blast tore through the late afternoon Ahis bloody side I cracked another casing, pushing the spell forward Razor blades and acid rained down on theDarius had asked for some really foul spells

E at us Then another He broke the for e continue to course through e that they were tory and electricity and created rabbed two of the guild casings and threw the toward us, theirbefore I act," I said "We shouldn’t have left the ward"

"The best offense is unpredictability You’re doing great" Emery threw spells so fast that I was in awe They flew out, one after the other, in a steady strea spells see in with casings

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw cars slowly pull up at the end of the street My heart pounded Some toward Veronica’s house "You face front I’ll face the back"

Clouds drifted in fro A spell flashed at ic I opened a casing fro the ground before wrapping itself around a green-robed er uild had intended to play nasty too At least ere all on the sa that he’d barely kept a spell fro him "We need to speed this up and take cover, Turdswallop I’o," I shouted over the noise as clouds blanketed the sky Wind picked up, rushing through the street Tree branches sildly

We ran toward Veronica’s house, where half a dozen s Eether and then set his tornado loose It rose into the sky and churned the air A spell zipped our way and I slashed it withit out Sirens sounded in the distance, this level of disturbance clearly too uild to keep quiet